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What is that?

I have had this 'on hold' for several days, enjoying it immensely.

A brother bought a birdfeeder for Mom, and his wife and he had brought the bird seed. Mom, however, wasn't enjoying it where it had been planted, because the couch blocked the lower part of the window.

One day, I thought...if that feeder was on the SIDE of the house, across the driveway, Mom could see it. I mentioned it to another sister-in-law, who promptly went out, and moved it. After adjusting it, she filled it.

Later that day, Mom yelled for me to come quick and look!! She was trying to count the MANY birds (sparrows) out there, and they kept changing places. She managed twice to get to thirty. There had to be at least that many. She called me back out there at least ten times that next couple of hours. A few times, I barely made it back down to my computer, sat down, and she'd excitedly call me back out to 'See all the birds!!!"

Since that day, a couple of months ago, Mom has repeated that same scenario many times, each time telling me to look in the bushes, look at the feeder, look at the ground... OH, MY! There they all go again!". She loves it.

This video reminds us that there is a time in life when things change....and the parent becomes ...the child.

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father…So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” Matthew 10:29-31

ObamaCare: Seniors Need Not Apply

My youngest brother is convinced that my interpretation of the health care bill is grossly mistaken. He truly thinks that everyone will get very good cradle to grave care (er... conception -- he IS pro-life)...

Since the 1970s, federal courts have regularly interpreted the “mandatory categories of care” within Medicaid to include abortion and thus mandate abortion coverage. That judicial interpretation of Medicaid will be adopted by courts in interpreting federal health care legislation, unless abortion is expressly excluded.

The author goes on to cite cases, and ends:

Finally, in reading these decisions, it must be understood that a “medically necessary” abortion is—under the Supreme Court’s abortion doctrine—whatever an abortion provider, in his/her personal, subjective judgment, determines it to be. The terms “necessary” and “medically necessary” are virtually synonymous, because both vest the abortion provider, in his or her subjective judgment, with complete discretion to determine their meaning. As the lower federal courts have applied the terms, an abortion is “necessary” because a woman requests it, and it becomes “medically” necessary when the doctor agrees to it. Consequently, when these two terms are combined—“medically necessary” to preserve the “health” of the woman”—a “medically necessary” abortion means any abortion a provider agrees to perform for any reason.

This is NOT a long article, but it is very clear and easily understood.

"This is the cruelest and most effective way to ensure that doctors are forced to ration care for their senior citizen patients. It takes the telltale fingerprints from the government: instead of bureaucrats directly specifying the treatment denials that will mean death and poorer health for older people, it compels individual doctors to do the dirty work. It is an outrageous way to provide coverage for the uninsured - by taking it away from America's senior citizens."

The provision penalizing doctors establishes that for at least five years, Medicare physicians who authorize treatments for their patients that wind up in the top 10% of per capita cost for a year will lose 5% of their total Medicare reimbursements for that year [see footnote 1 at bottom of release].

This means that all doctors treating older people will constantly be driven to try to order the least expensive tests and treatments for fear that they will be caught in that top 10%. It is noteworthy that this feature operates independently of any considerations of quality, efficiency, or waste - if you authorize enough treatment for your patients, however necessary and appropriate it may be, you are in danger of being one of the 1 in 10 doctors who will be penalized each year. Moreover, it creates a moving target - by definition, there will ALWAYS be a top 10%, no matter how far down the total amount of money spent on Medicare is driven.

“It's like a game of musical chairs, in which there is always one chair less than the number of players – so no matter how fast the contestants run, someone will always be the loser when the music stops,” O’Steen added.

The incentive this creates is purely cost-driven, without any balancing of benefit. It will create a constant sense of uncertainty in doctors, since none can know in advance precisely what the cutoff for a given year will be - resulting in still more pressure to limit treatment and diagnostic tests to the bare minimum.

Notes:1. On pages 80-81 of the 8.16.2009 Chairman's Mark, in the "Expansion of Physician Feedback Program" in Title III, Subtitle A, Part I; specifically, at the top of page 81: "Beginning in 2015, payment would be reduced by five percent if an aggregation of the physician's resource use is at or above the 90th percentile of national utilization. After five years, the Secretary would have the authority to convert the 90th percentile threshold for payment reductions to a standard measure of utilization, such as deviations from the national mean."

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) rates this as taking $1 billion from Medicare payments over a period of 6 years. See CBO 9/16/09 letter to Chairman Baucus, Table, page 3 of 7.

Bipartisan Prejudice: 59 Senators currently caucus with the majority. If reconciliation were to be used to pass health care legislation, it would disenfranchise senators and those they represent on a crippling partisan basis.

Setting Precedent: By bypassing Senate rules to pass a piece of policy legislation that overhauls one-sixth of our economy, the Senate would be setting a precedent for future partisan majorities to eliminate thoughtful debate and pass reckless and partisan legislation “by any means necessary.” Reconciliation bills are limited to 20 hours of debate and are difficult to amend.

Who Is Alan Frumin? The reconciliation process leaves incredible policy issues at the hands of the Senate parliamentarian, Alan Frumin. The non-elected Frumin would be responsible for deciding what could and could not be included in the final health care bill, making him the first of many faceless bureaucrats in Washington who could make important decisions that affect your health care.

Checks and Balances: Our founders designed the U.S. Senate as the “balanced wheel” to offset the passions presumed to dominate the House of Representatives. This course of action would turn the Senate into a replica of the House, jettisoning the supermajority requirement and thereby losing a constitutionally vital check and balance.

Ok, for some, there must be a language alert for this, but the ENTIRE video makes a VERY good point, and it is hilarious. He not only skewers ACORN, he also skewers MSM about NOT having covered this story!!

Disgusting piece of 'opinion'... read it if you can. Oh, and if you make it to the end of the article... the COMMENTS are equally aggravating, IMHO.

I am JUST as sick and tired of this garbage as I was when OJ Simpson was accused of the horrible death of his wife and her friend! I did not ever think of OJ as 'black' any more than I do Obama (who is half white, by the way).

I DO think of how far from our Constitution this current (and the previous) administration is taking our country, and THAT is what upsets me. NOT RACE.

I am bothered by catholics who claim to be Catholic but do not follow the teachings of Her Church on Life, Euthanasia, Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Cloning, etc. I am bothered that they continue to call themselves CATHOLIC, yet also continue to push agendas that will have millions more die horrible deaths in the own mothers' wombs.

I am bothered by the fact that our spending and debt has increased so rapidly, and so dangerously. I am bothered by the fact that most of these bills that are causing this are so long-winded that no one knows WHAT is in them, and WORSE YET, those VOTING ON THEM have not even READ them!

I am bothered by the fact that ACORN gets so much of our (NOTE: MY) money when it is involved in voter fraud and advising clients on how to secure $$ for PROSTITUTION of UNDERAGE ILLEGAL alien girls while evading legal and tax laws!!!

I AM NOT upset because Pres Obama is Black. I would NOT be upset if Pres Obama had been our first BLACK and FEMALE President. NEITHER of these have anything to do with ISSUES.

I AM upset about the ISSUES, the LYING, and the rapidly downhill trend our nation is on!!

Monday, September 14, 2009

This is # 3.... ACORN needs to be ENDED, PROSECUTED, and PAY BACK THE TAXPAYERS!!

PushBackNowSeptember 14, 2009

The saga of corruption continues in New York City... Incredibly the leadership of ACORN says this body of work is falsified and edited to make them look bad. My suggestion is that the leadership (congress, senate, administration and ACORN) best understand that ACORN is now finished DBAU along with their unscrupulous 360 associated co-mingled entities. Obama' and his administration are profligate spenders, so course we should expect this.

Now we push back hard, our focus on defeating the corruption in government. Please share this video and bring it up as a topic of caual conversation. This is war and we must use every means possible and every venue and genre available to let these facts out of the well sealed and protective "safety" of the main street media and administration. And we have to do this today! Please embed this video or link or our channel.www.PushBackNow.com

Boy, was I wrong. I can remember telling Glenn Reynolds during CPAC that these Tea Party demonstrations were rinky-dink and going nowhere. Barely more than a half-year later, they’re putting two million people on the Washington Mall. Wow! If I were Obama & Co., I’d be afraid, I’d be very afraid.

And no doubt they are. They bobbled the ball big time and I wouldn’t be surprised if heads are going to start to roll – and not just the obvious (and relatively inconsequential) ones like Van Jones. Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod are going to be looking at each other like nervous apparatchiks in the Politburo because someone is going to have take the bullet for the disaster they have wrought. Emanuel is looking like a particular dummy right now for opening his mouth about not missing a good crisis. It is from idiotic statements like that unread stimulus bills get passed or giant healthcare legislation proffered without anyone knowing the contents, not even (and maybe especially) the President.